Lawsuit filed over sale of gun in slaying of officer

Mississippi attorney Don Barrett knows well the worries of gun owners. After all, he's one himself.

"We don't want anybody messing with our guns," he said.

But what happened to Thomas Wortham IV is different, says Barrett, who joined with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence to sue a Mississippi pawnshop that sold a handgun used to kill the off-duty Chicago police officer three years ago.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Oxford, Miss., on behalf of Wortham's parents and sister, accused the pawnshop of negligence for failing to recognize clues that the gun's buyer was making an illegal purchase and then blocking the sale.

As proposed new gun legislation roils the country, the lawsuit takes aim instead at current laws that prohibit straw purchasing. In Chicago, these illegal transactions are among the most common ways for convicted felons to get their hands on guns, experts say.

Neither Barrett nor his son, Richard, also an attorney, has any concerns about bringing a case against a gun seller in the heart of the South.

"When I read about this, it made my stomach turn that this shop owner was so lax," said Richard Barrett, like his father a gun owner. "If he had taken care of business, it would not have happened. … Everybody paints us as a red state, (that) everybody is a hunter and has Hank Williams Jr. playing on all the radios.

"Just because people like guns around here and enjoy hunting doesn't make them devoid of common sense," he said. "We're not bringing this case to change laws. We are bringing this case because Thomas Wortham IV is no longer with us. His family lost him because a pawnshop here in Mississippi put profits over people."

The probe into Wortham's slaying in May 2010 led investigators to a small pawnshop on a corner in Byhalia, Miss.

It was there, at Ed's Pawn Shop and Salvage Yard, that the Smith & Wesson pistol used to kill Wortham was purchased. Quawi Gates, a Rust College student in Holly Springs, Miss., who had a gunrunning operation on the side, had asked an acquaintance, Michael Elliott, if he wanted to make some quick cash.

Gates' criminal record prevented him from buying guns, so he had lined up several college students to make the purchases for him for $50 to $100 a weapon. Elliott was stressed out over his hospitalized infant daughter and agreed to buy three guns for Gates in return for $100.

Wednesday's lawsuit accuses the pawnshop and its owner, Bruce Edward Archer, of failing to follow guidelines established by the gun industry's trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, about how to detect a straw purchaser.

According to the guidelines, gun sellers should fire a battery of questions at buyers who come off as suspicious. Among the red flags are buyers who purchase multiple guns at the same time and pay with cash, the suit says.

Elliott, for instance, paid $1,500 in cash for three guns as a first-time purchaser at Ed's Pawn Shop, according to the suit.

Gun sellers are not under any obligation to complete a sale if they are concerned, said Thomas Ahern, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesman in Chicago.

"They do not have to make a sale if they feel that it's a straw purchase taking place," Ahern said. "I equate it to a bartender. If a person comes in a bar and he is obviously intoxicated and he has a fistful of money, you could make that sale of a drink. But you have an obligation to refuse service to him to protect your business and the public."

According to the lawsuit, Ed's Pawn Shop sold an a total of eight guns to buyers recruited by Gates for the trafficking scheme.

"Ed's Pawn Shop took no reasonable steps to implement … reasonable precautions or to otherwise alter their business sales practices to minimize the risk that they would supply the criminal racket," the lawsuit alleges.

Archer could not be reached Wednesday for comment on the lawsuit's allegations.

Also sued were Elliott, who was convicted in Mississippi for making the straw purchase, and Gates, who is serving a 10-year sentence for his role in the gun-trafficking scheme.

Wortham, 30, was shot less than a week after he gave an interview to the Tribune about the rising tide of violence in his Chatham community on Chicago's South Side. He stood in a light rain in Cole Park, where the basketball hoops had been closed because of a spate of shootings, and promised that the historic neighborhood would rise above it.

"It's starting to feel like it's expected in this community," Wortham said then. "When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they think violence. In Chatham, that's not what we see. … We're going to fix it, so it doesn't happen again."

Six days later that very violence caught him as he left his parents' house.